Councils to be banned from using anti-terror powers to snoop on people who overfill bins or drop litter

Action: Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said councils would be stopped from using anti-terror legislation for snooping

The Government is planning action to stop local councils using surveillance powers designed for terrorism and serious crime to deal with trivial offences like dog-fouling, a Home Office minister said today.

Vernon Coaker admitted that council snooping on people who overfill bins or drop litter was undermining public support for the anti-terror law, and promised action 'in the near future'.

Mr Coaker also defended the scale of the national DNA database, which contains samples from 7.39 per cent of the UK population - more than in any other country in the world - and includes those detained by police but released without charge.

He told the House of Lords Constitution Committee that in the four years after a change in the law in 2001 which allowed police to retain DNA from people who have not been convicted or charged, some 6,290 of these individuals were linked to serious crimes including murder, rape and other sexual offences.

However, he was unable to say how many of these links led to prosecutions.

The Committee, which is carrying out an inquiry into surveillance and data collection, heard a number of peers express concern about intrusion into daily life by the authorities, following a string of cases in which councils have used powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to tackle relatively trivial misdemeanours.

The former head of the Local Government Association, Sir Simon Milton, wrote to councils in July to urge them to be more sparing in their use of the Act, which permits them to seek permission to carry out covert surveillance and intercept of personal communications.

At today's constitution committee hearing, Labour peer Lord Peston asked Mr Coaker: 'If these powers are being used for local authorities to search my dustbins, isn't the danger that you lose public support... in the area for which you most need public support, namely the anti-terrorism and anti-crime thing?'

Mr Coaker said he agreed 'absolutely' with peers' concerns and was in discussions on the issue with Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) minister John Healey.

'We don't want to see legislation available for local authorities to use with respect to serious crime being used... for example, in respect of dog-fouling,' Mr Coaker told the committee.

'That's something we need to address.'

He added: 'We have to stop some of these things happening that do undermine support... We are now in a position where, with DCLG, we have to look at the codes of guidance and are having discussions to take this forward so we avoid some of the issues that have arisen in the past.'

Mr Coaker stressed that local authorities have used RIPA powers to tackle serious crime, such as a case in which three roofers were jailed in North Yorkshire for tricking elderly people out of their life savings by persuading them to have unnecessary work done on their homes.

And he added: 'I do think people generally do support the use, even at a local authority level, of techniques to get communications data, providing that we don't have the sorts of problems we have seen.'

Lord Bledisloe challenged Mr Coaker over the size of the DNA database, which contains more than 10 times as many people, as a proportion of the population, as a similar scheme in the USA.

'What on earth is the justification for us having so many more of our population on the database than anybody else in the world?' he asked.

Mr Coaker said that an additional 200,000 names were recorded on the DNA database as a result of the 2001 change in the law.

Some 8,500 of these profiles, relating to 6,290 individuals, were later linked to 14,000 offences, including 114 murders, 55 attempted murders, 116 rapes, 68 other sexual offences, 119 aggravated burglaries and 127 cases of supplying drugs.

'It does demonstrate that there is a significant read-across from the retaining of that DNA to the significant possibility that large numbers of people have been responsible for serious crime,' he said.

Mr Coaker added: '(The database) has enabled us to solve a significant number of serious crimes.

'If you look at the numbers of murders, the number of rapes, serious robberies and other violent crimes that have been solved as a result of us having that database, we think that in the end is a proportionate response to tackling crime and a justification for it.'

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